| | Anarchists claim that since government is less efficient than private organizations competing in a free market, that even the best and most efficient minarchy is costing more than private defense agencies would cost and therefore, the taxes that cover the protection of individual rights is higher than it could be and because of that the taxes in excess of what the private defence agencies would charge is theft.
There are several logic errors involved in that.
1.) Without the prior existence of a significant degree of a monopoly of laws based upon individual laws you cannot have free markets (free of initiated force) hence no free competition, and instead you get competition that includes initiation of force.
2.) The costs of private defense will actually be higher. The indirect, but real product of a minarchy is human joy. The minarchy allows the maximizing of human action that is unleased by an environment of stable property rights. It is the transformation of the ideal of non-initiation of force into the culture. Even with today's corrupt government, I live with the positive expectation that I can walk out my front door safely. It that weren't so, my actions would be very restricted and much of my energy would be used up trying to protect and to defend. A stable minarchy, over time, maximizes an energy-releasing positive expectation. This is in opposition to the constant warfare of one 'defense' agency against another, where the competitive forces can include using the initiation of force and that generates the need to evolve new defenses against the new forms of attacks, and this becomes a significant aspect of everybody's life.
The minarchy's defense of a specific individual right in a specific instance is just one concrete and will mostly be important only to that individual. But the sum of all such acts over time, combined with the structure that makes that happen, generates the natural expectation that one can take any action that one wants (apart from those that violate rights) and that unleashes human creativity, productivity, and the joy that comes from this way of being. This is the real end goal and purpose of government - the environment that makes possible the joyous expression of our natural creativity and productivity.
There are some people whose mental make-up inclines them to be opposed to minarchy; it isn't that they are opposed to joy, or creativity or productivity, but they instead seem to have an inner drive, maybe a fear, of some unknown terror that will occur if people aren't "controlled" - these people will advocate for some degree of totalitarianism. They have either projected some need to protect people from themselves and want a nanny state, or they want to control people so they can't do anything they consider sinful, or they just fear freedom, or they hate people or life. These are the statists and the many flavors they come in.
Others have a dread of being 'constrained' by law, by order, by any restriction. Even by logic. Or they 'sense' a utopia that won't come about until law is abolished and this vision, despite all logic, rigidly remains a fixed idea. These are the anarchists.
(Edited by Steve Wolfer on 3/26, 3:30pm)
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